Page 5 of Vicious Vows

“Thank you. Please hold dinner until I’m finished with this meeting. I may have company, if you couldn’t hear that. And if not, she’ll need a plate in her room.” Unbuttoning my suit jacket, I walk past him and duck into my den where Jacob Sanders, my financial planner and the man responsible for pointing out my father’s oversight of the embezzlement going on right under his nose, sits comfortably on my couch sipping a glass of some sortof liquor. His eyebrows rise in greeting as he swallows the tart amber liquid from the glass, and then he raises it to me.

“Luke, I have good news…”

Not many people call me by my first name. Jacob is one of the very few, and only because we’ve known each other longer than I’ve had any power or influence. I sit across from him and take the second tumbler full of whiskey off the glass-top table between us and sip it, waiting for him to go on.

“Since Dale tracked that hacker issue you had, we aren’t losing any more money, and the recent loss of a quarter mil can be returned easily. You got him?” he asks, eyeing me over the rim of the glass as he finishes his drink.

“Her,” I grunt, still surprised by the fact that our hacker problem came in such a hot package. Micah DeSantis makes my dick hard just thinking about her, and I cross one leg over the other to camouflage it.

“A woman? Tell me she’s not the one I’ve been hearing…” His gaze lifts to the ceiling where for now, things are silent.

“She’s been a vocal companion this afternoon, I take it?” I can imagine her being pissed off, trashing the room, screaming and stomping. But it won’t do her any good. That room is impenetrable and impossible to break out of. Not even with her hacking skills. I hired the best security guys in the industry to make sure of it. I tend to keep my guests who are a little reluctant to stay with me in that room for safekeeping.

“Hmm, you know that’s a class-one felony?”

“So is murder one,” I say, staring at him. “I’ve never been caught and I don’t intend to. Besides, she doesn’t want the policeinvolved any more than I do. She’s a hacker who embezzled nearly a million dollars from me, Jason. She’ll play nice or she’ll get the shaft, and I won’t even have to do any of the hard work.” The whiskey goes down smoothly, coating my throat in a sweet and tart film that leaves a strong aftertaste.

Jason sits quietly, not responding to my comment. He knows how this game works despite running a very clean business. His finance firm has managed to stay out of the organization run by my father, though only narrowly, and his decision to finally join me was precipitated by this latest scandal in the making. But more so because he couldn’t wait to stick it to John Greenbeck, who was my father’s finance guy, who missed the embezzlement entirely. The man was worthless.

“What would you say to a little scheme of our own?” The thought had been rolling around in my mind all afternoon after meeting the beautiful Micah DeSantis—a gorgeous hacker who stole from the Mob then basically spat in my face when I caught her.

Jason leans forward on the couch and sets his empty glass on the table. His gaze drifts, grazing the Italian leather furniture, the large mahogany desk where I do business from home, and the tapestry hung on the wall as a decoration, but mostly to hide my safe. He tents his fingers and then looks back at me.

“What sort of scheme are you thinking?” His face is stern. He’s not the type of person to get tangled up in illegal activity, but doing what I’m thinking of doing won’t be easy to hide from the man who advises me how to invest my money or where to put it when it’s made.

I sip my drink and focus on his face, wondering just how far is too far for him. “We can use our hacker’s skills against ourenemies.” I let the words hang in the air as I finish my drink and then loosen my tie as I set the empty glass next to his.

He chuckles dryly and shakes his head. “Do you ever have a legitimate business idea?” He asks the question in jest, but he knows the truth. I don’t ever think by the books. Rules were made to contain the weak and to challenge the strong. Those who find a way around the rules and stay free men are the strongest, wisest men alive. And I am nearing my fortieth birthday as a free man living a life of organized crime. The power behind that truth is enough to scare the daylights out of even the most powerful authorities. I know what I’m doing, and I don’t get caught doing it.

“I run a casino…” My legitimate business is a front for money laundering and prostitution, but most casinos are.

“Yes, but gambling only became legal in New York State in 2013. That’s nearly two hundred and fifty years as a country before your ‘business’ was legal. So is it really?—”

“Jason,” I mewl, cutting him off, “you’re splitting hairs. What I do is so fine-tuned no one will ever suspect it. And if our organization can lose nearly a million dollars to a hacker who moved the money right under our noses, how much more can we, who never get caught, do with that talent?”

It makes perfect sense. And it flows together with my personal motto well. If you can do less work for the same profit, do it. This venture would be zero work for us and all profit, and if the code Micah writes is bad, she’s the fall guy. No loss on our part, and we can claim to our enemies from whom we steal that it happened to us too. It’s a win-win.

As Jason stews over it, thinking it over, I think about Micah. She’s young, but she’s brilliant and strikingly attractive. Someone with her skill and talent should’ve been snatched up by someone like me long ago. She’s been hiding, out of town or something. Her father probably kept her that way so my father’s men wouldn’t snatch her up, or she’d be in my casino right now working tricks.

But I don’t see her like that. She’s not a trick to me. Strangely enough, she’s the woman who stole from me then looked me in the eye and laughed, and with gusto, she put me in my place. She’s my match—call it a twin flame or a soul mate, whatever you’d like. We are the same, Micah and me, and I want to see her in action. Maybe she won't be the fall guy. Maybe she’ll be my little secret weapon, and maybe I’ll be able to enjoy more than just her talents.

“I need to go pay our little hacker a visit. See yourself out,” I tell him as I stand and straighten my tie, tightening it back up.

“Tomorrow, then?”

“Don’t do anything I wouldn’t do.” I wink at him, knowing that leaves very little for him to worry about. There isn’t anything I won’t do for a buck, and convincing this little vixen to work her magic on the keyboard for me should be simple. I’ll kill her family if she doesn’t cooperate. That’s usually incentive enough.

I move toward the door, putting that conversation behind me, but I hear his thoughtful words call after me. “You know she’s smart, Luke. She’s smart enough to do exactly what you want her to—steal from them, put money in your account, keep some for herself, and frame you for it all. I’d be careful.”

His words linger in my mind as I mount the stairs and head up the hall toward my prepared room. It’s quiet. She’s given up her banging and settled down for the time being. That’s a good thing. I want to discuss this business proposition with her while it’s still fresh in my mind, while she’s angry and desperate to do anything to get away from me. She’ll be more likely to agree. And I need her to be compliant or we’ll accomplish nothing.

Reaching into my shirt, I pull the key from the chain around my neck and unlock the door. As it swings open, it reveals Micah, sprawled out on her bed with her phone in hand. The lights are off, but whatever app she has on her screen illuminates her face. I flip the switch up as she sits up and locks her phone.

“About time you came to get me. Am I going home now?” The screaming may have stopped, but the angry glare and the divot between her eyebrows remain. She scoots to the edge of the bed, and I see her shoeless feet, stockinged and dangling off the side of the mattress.

I pull the chair into the room from its spot outside the door where my guard usually sits if needed and spin it around to face her, though I remain close to the open door. As I sit down, I loosen my tie again. I could’ve left it loosened after my chat downstairs, but I want her to think I’m relaxing around her, letting my guard down. She has to think she’s got some sort of power or she won’t compromise with me.

“You’re going to have a conversation with me about our future together, and then we’ll discuss home.” What she doesn’t know is that home will likely be here for a while. I’m not sure if she considers her father’s place home or if she has her own place, but all of that changes now. I’ll have to keep a close eye on her.

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